Veterans Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2022

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, of course, to the witnesses.

I will do my best to ask questions that you can actually answer. I really appreciate your being here, though, and I really appreciate the content of the information you sent us.

My first question is regarding the Excel spreadsheets. Could you explain to me what the “Gap ratio for low income” means? What is it indicating and what is it measuring?

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Please go ahead.

[Josée Bégin]

I will turn to my colleague Andrew.

[Andrew Heisz]

Sure.

The gap ratio is an indicator that measures the quantity below the low-income threshold that a person's income is. A larger gap ratio means that, on average, those individuals have an income that is further away from the low-income threshold. For example, if I look at the first table on veterans who are alive, it indicates that the gap ratio for women is 1.6, roughly, which means they're 60% below the low-income threshold.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Okay.

I'm going to try to ask this question. Hopefully, it makes sense. One of the things that we've heard from the testimony is that folks have the option to take a portion of their pension and put it away for their partner in the future. Did that come up in any of the work you had done? Do we have any data that says what percentage of veterans or what percentage of people who are impacted by this did put away money for their spouse?

[Josée Bégin]

On that question, I am browsing quickly through my notes and I would say that we don't have that information in front of us, but if it's okay, Mr. Chair, we could confirm later in writing whether or not we have the information. I suspect that we do not have it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you. That's so helpful.

Thank you, Chair.

Based on the data collection and analysis, can you tell us a bit about the income level of spouses? I'm trying to get a sense of the poverty rates, to some degree, but the other part is that I'm curious to know if the data told us whether there are any changes through different cohorts or different generations. I know that sometimes women who are of a certain age who worked inside the home did not work outside the home, and younger populations today tend to have both folks working. I'm wondering if there's any difference between those age cohorts.

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, I will turn to my colleague Andrew for that question.

[Andrew Heisz]

Thank you for your question, Ms. Blaney.

I think we would need to do more analysis to answer that question. The data that we have presented to you here shows that older survivors and older spouses of veterans who are still alive do have lower incomes than younger ones do, but that's fairly normal in terms of people's life-course. Their incomes do get lower as they age out of the workforce and into retirement years.

What we would really need to know to answer your question specifically is that we would need to have looked at an earlier year as well and at the incomes of, say, people in 2008. Then we could have said, for a person over the age of 80, how was their income in 2008, compared to a person over the age of 80 in 2018. Then you could say that they were better or worse off compared to that earlier year. Unfortunately, we weren't asked to do that particular type of analysis, so we can't make a conclusion right now across cohorts.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you. I think what's interesting about talking to Stats Canada is always that reflection of what other studies we could do that would really help us to comprehend these issues in a more fulsome way. Thank you for that clarity.

I know that there was an agreement and you shared the information with VAC, but I'm wondering if you shared this information with anyone else. I know, for example, that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is currently doing a study on this issue. I'm wondering if that information has been shared with the Parliamentary Budget Officer or anyone else.

[Josée Bégin]

Thank you for your question.

In this case, I would say that, no, the information was only shared with the client. However, once we have produced information for a client, our rule, if I can say that, is usually that it is available for others who would make a request for it. I just want to confirm with my colleague Andrew, but to my knowledge, we haven't shared it with any other organization or client.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

This is my last question in this section. You talked a couple of times about cost-recovery contracts. Could you just explain to me what that means?

[Josée Bégin]

What that means is that we have a base budget at Statistics Canada, so we have some specific programs that we will conduct on a regular basis; however, we also have resources that are available to do additional work that may be on an ad hoc basis or an occasional basis. That's what we call “cost recovery”. We'll have clients come to us and ask us if we could undertake some work, whether it's in terms of data collection, data integration or analysis. We do a cost estimate around that, and they will provide some funding for the initiative.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Ms. Bégin.

Thank you for your questions, Ms. Blaney.

I'd like to invite Mrs. Roberts for five minutes, please.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to pass my questions on to your favourite person, Fraser Tolmie. He didn't finish his questions and I know you love to hear from him.

Take it away.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

My friend Fraser Tolmie, the floor is yours.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Chair, thank you.

I have a couple of other questions that came to me. I want to leap off from the Maritimes and Quebec question we had.

I had originally asked whether your study discovered any reasons that the Maritimes and Quebec had a higher proportion of survivors living in a low-income situation. The second part of that question is whether there is a dramatic difference from that of the rest of Canada.

Would you be able to quantify that?

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, I will turn to my colleague Andrew for this one.

[Andrew Heisz]

Thank you for the question.

Broadly speaking, we release income statistics at Statistics Canada annually. It's a pretty common pattern that household incomes—the incomes of families and individuals—are higher in western provinces, somewhere in the middle in Ontario and B.C., and lower in Quebec and the maritime provinces. That can be due to a lot of different things, including the types of work and work environments that are available. It also reflects the cost of living. It's often the case that many places in the Maritimes and in Quebec have a lower cost of living than some other places in Canada.

That's my first point, which is that the pattern we're seeing here among this particular group is fairly similar to the pattern we see in more aggregated statistics that concern the population overall.

My second point is that the low-income measure being used here doesn't take into account these differences in cost of living. It simply asks what proportion of Canadians in this province have an income that's low relative to the Canadian median, which means lower than most other people in the country. It doesn't take into consideration the cost of housing, food or transportation. Again, in those cases we often see that this particular low-income measure shows differences with other provinces and it sometimes shows higher levels.

Other measures, which aren't possible with this particular study—like the market basket measure, which does control for local costs—could show different results.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Similarly but different, your presentation outlined some relatively low median-income levels. Your answer has just said that across Canada we've identified where there are some income differences.

How does this compare to the average income of a retired Canadian senior? What are the differences between the two? Would you be able to quantify that or did you see any trends there?

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, I can start answering the question and then I'll turn to my colleague Andrew, if he has anything to add.

To answer specifically, that was not part of the request that we received from Veterans Affairs Canada. In order to answer that question specifically by doing the comparison to the rest of the Canadian population who are retired, we would have to get back to the committee.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you.

Mr. Heisz, if you have something to add, please go ahead.

[Andrew Heisz]

Thank you, Mr. Tolmie.

I would only echo what Ms. Bégin said. Certainly, we have the data to provide a comparator, if you were interested in looking at similar populations that would be comparable using the same data.